How to Enable Firefox 54 Multi-Process Feature, If It’s Not Working By Default

After years of waiting, Mozilla on June 13 has finally launched Firefox 54 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android, with multi-process support — a “major improvement” to improve your browsing experience.

Mozilla’s multi-process support in Firefox has been in development for over 8 years as part of a project, codenamed Electrolysis (E10S), which aimed at improving responsiveness and speed by streamlining memory use with multi-process support.

Mozilla added multi-process support to Nightly versions of Firefox back in 2009. Then in 2011, it made the decision to put the development of Electrolysis on ice. Then again back in April 2013, it revived the multi-process architecture feature again and has been working on it ever since.

The main goal of the project is to separate plug-ins, the browser interface and tabs in separate processes to improve the browser’s stability, security, and performance.

With the release of Firefox 48, Mozilla enabled multi-process support (that could split itself into two processes) for 1 % of users, slowly ramping up to nearly half of the Firefox Release Channel. With Firefox 49, Mozilla expanded support to include a small initial set of compatible add-ons, declaring that the goal was to have all Firefox users with multi-process sometime in the first half of 2017.

That time has now arrived with Firefox 54. Describing the latest release as the largest change to Firefox code ever, Mozilla says it has worked hard to avoid increased memory consumption, and slower performance, as Firefox, now uses up to four processes to run web page content across all open tabs (four is the default, but this can be tweaked in the browser’s settings).

[By default, Chrome starts a new process for every tab, thus using an infinite number of processes, which eventually slow down the web browser as well].

In other words, Firefox is finally making better use of your computer’s hardware (significantly less RAM) by separating the tabs into separate processes. With this, the complex web pages in one tab will now have a much lower impact on responsiveness and speed in other tabs. In theory, moving to multiple content processes will improve stability and performance (one bad tab won’t slow down the rest of your computer).

“Firefox 54 with E10s makes sites run much better on all computers, especially on computers with less memory. Firefox aims to strike the “just right” balance between speed and memory usage,” says Mozilla in its blog post.

Firefox 54.0 for the desktop is available now as a free, open-source download on Firefox.com, and almost all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. The feature is being rolled out to 80% cent of Firefox users, with 20 percent being held back as a “control group” for comparative purposes.

But many Firefox users are still struggling to take advantage of multi-process support. The users were disappointed to see that their web browser is still clinging to a single process. This issue is happening because one or more of your installed Firefox add-ons could be incompatible with Electrolysis, or multi-process feature.

Here’s how users can enable multi-process support in their system.

Step 1 — Check if Multi-Process is Working

Users can check to see if multi-process support has been enabled by opening Firefox and typing about:support in the address bar and look for the “Multiprocess Windows” line (as shown):

If it says “1/1 (Enabled by default)” — multi-process feature is working.

If it says “0/x (Disabled by add-ons)” — multi-process is not working.

If it’s listed as “disabled by add-ons, go to step 2.

Step 2 — Disable/Remove Incompatible Add-Ons

Visit about:addons in the address bar and check for the presence of add-ons that aren’t compatible — removing these and restarting should trigger multiprocess support.

In the case of some incompatible add-ons — Norton Security Toolbar in Windows for example — they can’t be removed, in which case users should contact the add-on provider for more assistance.

Step 3 — Enable Firefox Multiprocess Feature

Type about:config in the address bar

Search for tabs.remote.autostart

Double-click on it and set value to True

Step 4 — Change No. of Content Processes

You can also change the number of content processes, which is by default 4, to more or less, according to your pool of RAM.

Visit about:config in the address bar

Search for ipc.processCount

Set its value to more than 1

That’s it. You are done! You do not need to restart your web browser for this to take effect.

It all started when Facebook introduced a great feature for page admins to target the audience 'who liked a specific post of their page but not the page itself' to like the page by sending invitations to users asking them if they wished to like their page.

While the use of face recognition seems to be helpful and would decrease unauthorized image uploads, the idea of Facebook scanning every photo and using facial recognition to collect our biometric data is sure to upset some people.

About All Tech Buzz

On AllTechBuzz we cover wide range of Technology Articles. We have been educating people on various tools and technologies since few years. Currently, we are also running a Forum where our experts answer different queries related to Blogging and Technology.

About the Admin

Imran Uddin started his career as a Blogger, now runs a Tech company - All Tech Media Pvt. Ltd. After 6 years of spending in Digital Space, he has gained expertise in various fields of Digital Media and Marketing.